The field of the disclosure relates generally to regenerating adsorbent material, and more particularly, to methods and systems that remove oil and contaminating materials from spent adsorbent materials.
At least some known industrial facilities include components that operate by combusting a stream of fuel with a stream of inlet air. To obtain such a fuel, at least some known industrial facilities use hydrocarbon oils such as crude oil. However, as is known in the art, hydrocarbon oils, such as heavy fuel oils, contain at least small amounts of contaminating deleterious materials such as sulfur, vanadium, and/or nickel compounds. Such contaminants, as well as others, limit the direct use of crude oil or heavy oils as a fuel. As such, at least some known industrial facilities use a purifying process to remove contaminating materials from the crude oil or heavy oil prior to using it as fuel.
At least some known oil purification processes pass a heavy oil through an adsorption column that is packed with an adsorbent material having a strong affinity for sulfur, vanadium, and nickel compounds. As the oil contacts the adsorbent material, the contaminants, and at least a portion of the oil, are adsorbed into the material in the column, and thus, a purified oil that is useful as a fuel feed stream is produced. However, once the adsorbent material is saturated with oil, metal compounds, and other impurities, the adsorbent material must either be replaced with new adsorbent material, or removed and cleaned prior to being re-packed into an adsorption column. Some known adsorbent regeneration methods use thermal regeneration at high temperatures to rid the material of organics. However, the amount of energy and downtime required for such a regeneration method may increase the operational and maintenance costs of industrial facilities and decrease the overall efficiency of the system.